


Many-Eyed

by knucklewhite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Blindfolds, M/M, Oral Sex, Power Imbalance, Wing Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:03:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2049195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knucklewhite/pseuds/knucklewhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Prophets," Gabriel says, "are usually a bit more talkative. In my experience, anyway. Cat got your tongue?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Many-Eyed

**Author's Note:**

> Is it bad form to write for [a kink meme prompt](http://dominionkink.livejournal.com/422.html?thread=1446#t1446) based on one of your own tags? If so, I offer pudding (homemade, not canned) in repentance.

The man in black stays long after the afternoon chapel service has ended.  
  
William has already seen his flock on their way, pressing hands and accepting thanks until his cheeks are aching with it. He's collecting service sheets and replaying his sermon in his head when he catches a flicker of movement on the other side of the chapel, and his mental replay stutters to halt. The man, not one of William's usual worshippers, is strolling along the far aisle, as sleek and as faintly predatory as one of his father’s lions.  
  
As William watches, the man runs his hand along the backs of the wooden pews, pauses now and then to examine the tapestries — ornate renderings of the Rescue of the Savior gifted to the church by the V4 Weavers' Guild — then stops in front of the stained-glass window above the altar. The man clasps his hands behind his back and peers up at it, head tilted.

"Odd that you keep this here, after everything," he says, his voice pitched loud enough to echo around the chapel.  
  
William lays the stack of paper on a pew and walks over to the altar. "Can I help you?"  
  
"Isn't it rather . . . morbid to keep such a thing?"  
  
The late afternoon sun spills through the colored glass, painting the man's profile in shades of blue and purple as he gazes up at the window. William joins him in studying the familiar scene: the Archangel Gabriel, resplendent with wings of purple fire, stands over the Virgin's bowed head, a single white lily in his outstretched hand.  
  
"It's the Annunciation," William says. "It depicts the—"  
  
"I know what it is, but why do you keep it? I'm surprised it wasn't destroyed."  
  
"Ah, well," William says, "Saviorism focuses on hope, on rebirth, not on destruction. The Annunciation is a reminder that God once gifted us with his only begotten son, and will gift us with a savior once more."  
  
The man huffs out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh. "Sometimes destruction is necessary. A field has to be plowed before it is sown, no?"  
  
William shifts his gaze to the man's profile, wondering if he should be calling on the guards. Some sections of Vega's population aren't particularly keen on the church, not since the very concept of religion made itself rather less than conceptual twenty-five years ago. The chapel has been vandalized in the past, and there's something about the tone of the man's voice that raises goose bumps on William's arms. He takes a step towards the door.  
  
But then the man says, voice like a caress, "It _is_ rather beautiful, though, isn't it?" And turns to William with a smile.  
  
It is beautiful. So is the man.  
  
"Uh," William says, flustered. "My father had—"  
  
"Whele." It's not a question.  
  
"Yes, the Consul. He had the window shipped from his old ministry before the war. My mother was always very fond of it, he tells me, although I don't quite remember her. She died when I was very young, you see."  
  
William's not sure why he's spilling his family history onto the marble floor at this man's feet, only that his mouth seems to be moving without his consent. Something about the man radiates calm authority, and William feels like one of his own worshippers, eager to please, not as a Principate-in-waiting should feel. He folds his hands on the front of his vestment, straightens his back, like his father taught him.  
  
"And you?" the man says. He's still smiling, one corner of his mouth curved up and painted with the blue light that shines through the Virgin's robe. His eyes are blue, too: a cold shade of blue-gray, like polished steel.  
  
"I'm sorry? Am I—?"  
  
"Are you also fond of the piece?" The man cocks his head as he says it, and William feels the weight of that gaze as if it really were steel.  
  
"Yes," William says. "Yes, I am very fond of it."  
  
It's the truth.  
  
William has often stood before the window, looked up at the archangel offering the lily, and wondered how anyone could have ever been surprised that such a being might want to lay waste to humanity after having such a gift spurned. In the image, the Archangel Gabriel is beautiful — painfully so, William's always thought guiltily — but also terrible, in the oldest sense of the word. The talent of the artist was such that the archangel's wings seem almost alive in the shifting light. At midday, when the desert sun streams straight through the glass panels and into the chapel, the wings light up and consume the entire scene in purple flames.  
  
Well, Gabriel's fire did consume, and William is here to tend the ashes that a second chance will grow from, a chance that won't be spurned this time. The window is a reminder of that.  
  
They both stand there, contemplating the image.  
  
The man breaks the silence first. "I enjoyed your service, you know. Just the right mix of brimstone and hope for my tastes. You do need a little bit of fire and doom. Such a seasoning makes the prospect of salvation all that much more potent, I've always found."  
  
"Well . . . well, thank you very much, Mr . . . ?" William holds out his hand, leaves it dangling there in mid-air for far too long until he realizes the man isn't going to reciprocate. He lets it fall limply by his side. "The talent for preaching runs in the family, I suppose."  
  
"Your father is a powerful man."  
  
"He is," William agrees.  
  
"It can be difficult to thrive in the shadow of powerful men, can't it? Especially when those powerful men are fathers. Yet I've a feeling you'll be a powerful man too, William. Perhaps some day soon."  
  
William feels a small thrill at the sound of his name on the man's lips. He smooths his hand down his vestment, not quite meeting the man's eyes. "Well, I'm . . . I mean, I'm not sure that . . ."  
  
The man is studying William with something that looks like amusement. William's not quite sure where this is going, but feels entirely unable to stop it in its tracks. He's raised congregations to their feet, spoken before diplomats, before a queen, even, but this man? Somehow this man and his sharp eyes make the words feel clumsy in William's mouth.  
  
The man finally holds out his hand, an abrupt movement, quick as a pounce. "I'm Gabriel," he says.  
  
And William can't quite stop himself laughing as he takes it.  
  
—  
  
William had thought the name a joke, some sort of code borne of a strange moment of connection in the chapel.  
  
Not any more.  
  
They both stand in the back room of a derelict gas station some twenty miles south of Vega, a place that won't be visited by patrols for another two weeks, and William watches Gabriel's powerful black wings flex and move. Their draft stirs two decades worth of dust in the room, and the motes glitter in the shaft of sunlight spilling through the grimy window.  
  
Wings of purple fire seem somewhat feeble in comparison.  
  
Oddly, despite the rush of adrenaline surging through his body, despite all he's ever been taught about any-angel-that-isn't-Michael, his first instinct isn't to run — it's to touch.  
  
He's seen Michael's wings in action plenty of times, of course, and up close, too. But that urge to reach out, to brush your fingers across the tips of the primary feathers just to know what they might feel like, never quite leaves you, no matter how many times you've seen them, no matter how many times it's been drummed into your head not to even think about it.  
  
Are they soft, like bird feathers? Or are they as unyielding as something able to deflect an entire clip of bullets might suggest?  
  
When he was a boy, he'd raised a hand to Michael's wings once. He'd been playing in the garden when the archangel had alighted on the terrace on some mission to lecture with stony-faced sincerity at William's father again. Michael had been so very close, and William hadn't been able to resist stretching out his fingers towards those black feathers. His father's hand had shot out and gripped William's wrist so hard he'd had finger-shaped bruises for a week.  
  
William rubs that same wrist now and then tears his eyes away from the wings to meet Gabriel's eyes. Gabriel is smiling in that particular way of his, one corner of his mouth tilted up, as if he were aware of some cosmic inside-joke.

And perhaps he is.  
  
"Prophets," Gabriel says, "are usually a bit more talkative. In my experience, anyway. Cat got your tongue?"  
  
"I— I need to sit down." William pulls one of the chairs out from under the table that squats by the window; it squeaks across the vinyl floor. He flops into it, rests his hands on the table, mindless of the dust, and tries to remember how to breathe.  
  
As intimidating as William finds him, Gabriel has been a sounding board over these past few months. Time after time, William has poured his frustrations into the well of Gabriel's assurance, had his views and ideas, theological and otherwise, listened to with sincerity — real sincerity, not the brittle veneer of interest his father deigns to show him.  
  
William almost laughs to think he'd imagined there might actually be something between them, some small pull of tension. The way Gabriel always stood slightly too close for comfort, close enough for William to feel the warmth of him; the way he'd curled his fingers in William's hair just once, cupped the back of William's skull in a hot palm and told William he was destined for great things.  
  
He feels a small pang now at the impossibility. An archangel, of all things. _The_ archangel, who offers him not a single white lily, but something more.  
  
"Why me?" William asks.  
  
"Who else _but_ you, William?" Gabriel moves closer, stirring the dust in his wake, until his right wing brushes the table, mere inches from where William's hand lies. "We want the same thing. We both want to look upon God once again. Will you stand at my side and see all things renewed?"  
  
William moves his fingers in the dust, stretches them out across the tabletop until they meet the edge of Gabriel's wing. He runs a trembling hand across the feathers there.  
  
They're soft.  
  
—  
  
The knot is tight against the back of William's head; the coarse fabric presses close against his eyelids.  
  
He's been standing — shirtless, barefoot and blindfolded — in the temple atrium for what he thinks is about seven or eight minutes now, although he lost count of the seconds a while back. The stone is cool under his feet. He can hear nothing but his own breath and a faint trickle of water, as if there were a spring nearby. His hands twitch at his sides, palms sweaty, but he's determined not to break, not to simply reach up and remove the blindfold, as he so easily could.  
  
Instead, he concentrates on the smell of candlewax and incense; the latter is sweet, like crushed petals warmed in the heat of the sun. Having something to focus on is calming, although he still can't quite stop himself from flinching at the voice when it finally comes.  
  
"Did you know," says the voice from the blackness beyond the blindfold, "that cherubs are just a cheap joke cooked up to sell novelty figurines? Cherubim aren't plump little babies with fluffy wings."  
  
There's a long pause. William feels a rush of air against his skin, hears a flap like a sheet being shaken out, and then something soft brushes against his bare back, raising goose bumps in its wake.  
  
It feels like feathers.  
  
The voice continues. "Cherubim — all angelic forms, in fact — are _utterly_ incomprehensible to the human mind. But Ezekiel had the rough sketch of it right: four faces, four wings, and bodies," another pause as something soft trails across William's ribs, "covered entirely with eyes. The little shits really are all-seeing. Imagine that."  
  
But William isn't imagining Cherubim at all. Again, the soft brush of feathers at his back. He shudders.  
  
"Gabriel," he says. "I—"  
  
He's silenced by the sensation of something brushing along his bottom lip, pressing the vulnerable flesh there into his teeth. He opens to it. A thumb pushes into his mouth, rests on his tongue for a moment, and then withdraws, trailing across his teeth and leaving a smear of saliva on his chin.  
  
"Shh, William," Gabriel says.  
  
William presses his lips together, breathes through his nose. His chest is rising and falling more rapidly now.  
  
"Where was I?" Gabriel says. "Oh yes, _eyes_. Can you imagine what it must be like to have your entire body covered with eyes? All of it? Arms . . . Back . . . Chest." William feels a brush of feathers against each corresponding part of his body as Gabriel names it, a punctuation that sends his skin twitching. "Even their wings. That's why father always kept them so very _close_."  
  
There's a moment of silence, and then William feels, more than hears, movement close to his right, a subtle shift in the air. He tenses, his fingers clenching, his body vibrating in anticipation of the inevitable brush of feathers.  
  
Instead, there's breath hot against his neck, a line of heat at his side, skin to skin. "All the better to see you with," Gabriel whispers into his ear.  
  
And Gabriel remains there, his slow, even breaths warming William's neck, until some small piece of restraint in William finally melts like wax under a flame, and he turns his head, lips parting automatically, seeking contact. His mouth meets something warm and wet for a moment, and then nothing but air. He moans his frustration.  
  
"Patience is a virtue," Gabriel says. "Didn't father teach you anything?"  
  
William can be patient, can't he? He's a Whele, after all.  
  
But he doesn't have to be patient for long, because then there are hands at his waist. Fingers slipping under his waistband. Warm knuckles skimming his belly. Gabriel's fingers slip lower — _Oh, this is happening_ , William thinks, sucking in a breath — but then those fingers tighten and twist in the fabric at William's waist. A hard tug, and William stumbles, takes two steps, hands reaching out reflexively to cling onto something.  
  
There's nothing.  
  
William turns, disoriented, arms outstretched like a blind man's.  
  
Gabriel chuckles, low.  
  
The sound stirs something dark and hot in the pit of William's belly, overpowering any last trace of doubt. The fear is still there, of course, but the darkness beyond the blindfold absorbs it instead of bouncing it back at him. Surrendering is easy. There is no other option but to give himself up to it, to trust in it. William has seen his father's lions play with their prey, looked on with wide eyes while his father held his head steady and made him watch. At some point the prey animal always gave in, realized there was little point in running, and submitted itself like a sacrifice to be devoured. It was always a relief.  
  
So, he lowers his arms, presses his clenched fists against his thighs, just to stop himself from palming his cock through his pants. He's entirely sure he's harder than he's ever been in his life, and knows Gabriel must see it. The thought only makes him harder still.  
  
"You're going to be my eyes, William." Slow footsteps, circling. The rustle of feathers.  
  
"Yes," William agrees, willing himself not to turn to track the sound.  
  
"My eyes, your body." Gabriel's voice is lower now, a reverberation that William can almost feel against his skin.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Gabriel's hands return to William's waist, and this time the tug isn't to unbalance, it's to divest, to expose him to the cool air of the atrium. William feels his cock catch on his waistband, bob free. Gabriel grips William's arm, offers balance as he steps from the puddle of his last remaining items of clothing.  
  
The only thing William wears now is the blindfold. It feels right to stand naked and sightless before God.  
  
"Delectable," Gabriel says. "A tasty morsel, all shucked and pink."  
  
A hand on William's chest, a firm pressure in the hollow of his breastbone, hot as the desert sand. Then Gabriel shoves, hard, and William stumbles backwards until his shoulders hit something solid and cold, rough stone against his naked back. There's a moment of terrified dislocation — because he was sure he was at least twenty paces away from the wall — and his hands twitch to the blindfold automatically.  
  
Gabriel is on him in an instant.  
  
He presses himself to William, clothed hip to naked, grips William's chin with cruel fingers and forces William's head to the side until his cheek meets cold stone. The muscles of William's neck twist like a wrung-out dishcloth. His heart thuds in his chest. Yet his erection doesn't flag at all, because he can feel the heat of Gabriel's bare chest against his, the slick texture of leather against his thighs, a hardness digging into his hip that must be Gabriel's erection.  
  
The thought that he alone might be the cause of Gabriel's arousal is enough to send his hips jerking forwards, but Gabriel holds him still, pinning him to the wall with the strength of his thighs and two strong wing beats.  
  
"These bodies," Gabriel says, as he leans in to mouth at William's neck, fingers tight against William's chin. "So fragile. So breakable. And yet capable of such wonders."  
  
Gabriel's teeth are at William's neck now and William squeezes his eyes shut under the blindfold, trying not to picture the shark-like smile of an eight-ball, the blood-rimmed fur around a lion's maw, and yet thrilling at the thought all the same. Fear and arousal combine to create something much more than the sum. He tilts his head up as far as he's able to under Gabriel's grip and offers his throat in submission. Gabriel makes a noise half-approval, half-hunger, and bites down, sharply, at the tender juncture between neck and shoulder. William grunts, his nails digging into the wall behind him. It hurts, but it's a blunt, human sort of hurt that goes straight to his cock.  
  
"Fuck," he says, trying to jerk his hips, but barely able to move under Gabriel's weight. " _Fuck._ "  
  
He feels Gabriel smile against his neck, all teeth. "Where is your eloquence now, little preacher?"  
  
But William might as well be gagged as blindfolded, because any words but expletives or pleas seem meaningless in the face of this. He wants to speak with his hands, to reach out and card them through the feathers he knows are _right there_ in front of him, but he digs his fingernails into the wall instead. He's not entirely insane. Not yet.  
  
But insane enough to beg, perhaps.  
  
"Please," William says.  
  
"Eloquent enough," Gabriel says, and releases William's chin, and William sucks in a breath — astonishment and arousal intermingled — as Gabriel slides down William's body, thuds to his knees at William's feet, his mouth hot against William's stomach.  
  
"You will accept my love, William," Gabriel says against William's skin, and William can feel every movement of Gabriel's lips, like he's feeling the words instead of hearing them. "You will break under it and reform into something altogether stronger." Gabriel's voice is little more than a growl. "Something full of eyes."  
  
They are beyond questions and answers now, and William knows that Gabriel isn't looking for assent. Gabriel's tongue traces a wet line across the flat of William's stomach, and William can only close his eyes in the darkness, squeeze them tight and watch the jitter of sparks behind his eyelids.  
  
There's light there, even in this absence of it.  
  
Then Gabriel's mouth is on him.  
  
Hands grip his hips, tight enough to bruise; a tongue licks a line, filthy and dripping, from the base to the head of his cock. Then wet heat envelops him whole, and William is lost, entirely.  
  
He groans, knocks his head back against the wall, his fingertips fluttering at the stone as Gabriel swallows around him. Gabriel moves one hand from its punishing grip on William's hipbone, wraps it around the base of William's cock and begins to pump, his mouth working at the head, sweet as sin.  
  
 _Yes_ , William wants to say. _Consume me. Devour me. Make me nothing but a part of you._ But the words twist and shift under his tongue, turn to moans as soon as they leave his lips. He speaks them with aborted thrusts of his hips instead.  
  
William is no innocent, no worthy recipient of any symbolic white lily. The only son of Vega's Consul has been granted many boons, preacher or not: The ambitious sons and daughters of V5 merchants, all insincere smiles and hands grasping at the top rung of the V-system ladder; V2 escorts, lush and willing, pressed on him by his father. Yet he's never felt anything like this. It's as though Gabriel has memorized the blueprint of this anatomical design, like, having witnessed their making, he knows the flesh and bones of human bodies better than any human ever could.  
  
Like he could push his lips beneath William's skin and extract his soul one shard at a time.  
  
There's a rustle of feathers then, a shift in the air that ruffles his hair, and William feels something soft brush against his spread thighs. Wings. And at that moment William wants nothing more than to tear off the blindfold, so that he can _see_ this: Gabriel at his feet, lips stretched around his cock, wings extended and flexing around them, blocking out all light.  
  
William's hands move from their death grip on the wall and reach out. They meet feathers. Gabriel makes a dark noise around William's cock, a noise that hits William somewhere under his ribs like a blow. William's not sure if the noise is encouragement or warning, but it's impetus enough for him to curl his fingers around the edges of Gabriel's wings, like putting his hand in the lion cage and wondering if he'll feel soft fur or just teeth in his flesh.  
  
The wings move under his hands as he touches them, pressing up into his grip. Gabriel digs his nails into William's hip, drives forward, all encouragement. William feels his cock hit the back of Gabriel's throat, feels the wings thrash like a trapped animal as he holds them.  
  
And that's it — he's done.  
  
He pushes his fingers between the feathers, thrusts twice into Gabriel's mouth, and then comes with a groan — comes so hard that his blindness becomes daylight, burning white behind his eyes.  
  
He slumps back against the wall, wrung-out and boneless, held in place only by Gabriel's hand at his hip. His brain is a fuzz of static; the view behind his closed eyelids is a fuzz of static, too.  
  
Gabriel pulls off him with a wet sound, then pins William's bruised hips again with both hands and licks him clean. William shudders under Gabriel's tongue, too sensitive.  
  
"You taste sweet, William," Gabriel says, his voice all honeyed satisfaction, as he rises to his feet.  
  
There's the sound of a zip, and William feels a hand at his side, pushing firmly into his ribs. Then teeth at his neck again, and William can only hang there, limply, listening to the frantic sounds of palm on cock, the movement of wings, Gabriel's harsh breaths as he finds his own release.  
  
"You're part of me now," Gabriel breathes against William's neck, the movement of his hand speeding. William can feel Gabriel's cock, slick at the tip, prodding at the crease between William's groin and hip. Gabriel's hand tightens at William's side, the pressure painful now. "Now you are in the light," Gabriel growls, and bites down again over the mark on William's neck, his hand pushing into William's ribs like a blow. William cries out.  
  
There's a wet pulse of warmth against William's stomach, a streak along his chest, and Gabriel grunts and slumps against him, all slick skin and heat, his open mouth against William's neck.  
  
They stand there, pressed against the wall, sweat cooling as Gabriel trails his fingers through the sticky mess at William's stomach, smears it across William's torso like he's trying to push it beneath William's skin, into the very meat of him.  
  
Then Gabriel pushes back and leaves William leaning against the rough stone, legs liquid, his own weight barely holding him up. His neck throbs in time with his pulse. The right side of his rib-cage feels like it's been dealt a hammer blow; it hurts to breathe.  
  
William feels a tug at the side of his head. The blindfold falls away from his face. He squints into the light, eyes gradually adjusting to the glow of far too many candles. There are hundreds of them, crowding the stone floor and steps of the temple atrium like a congregation of tiny worshippers, all ablaze and melting.  
  
Gabriel stands before him, unblinking, eyes almost black in this light. The wings are gone now, but nobody could ever mistake him for human. He's still as beautiful as the archangel in the stained-glass window, slick body gilded by the candlelight. His lips are wet, red — and red from more than his use of them, William realizes with a shiver.  
  
William raises his hand to the bite on his neck. His fingers come away bloody.  
  
Gabriel tilts his head then, licks William's blood from his lips, and smiles. The blindfold dangles from Gabriel's hand, the black eyes drawn on the coarse fabric as open and unblinking as Gabriel's own.  
  
"Do you see now?" Gabriel says.  
  
And William does.


End file.
